The two musicians talked at a friend’s show in October 2014, chatting about how they were both experiencing creative standstills. Ryan was lacking inspiration to make more instrumental music, and Alela was at a loss for how to dive into writing a new record after the birth of her daughter. A few days later, Ryan asked Alela if she would be into collaborating and then sent her several recordings of intricate guitar pieces. Alela listened on repeat while staring out the window at the changing leaves, initially unsure how to sing even a note over what she heard.

Eventually, something clicked. Words came first, and with words, melody followed. Throughout the winter, Alela made trips across town to Ryan’s house to woodshed the songs over cups of tea. Before they knew it, they had a record – a collaboration of voice and guitar with intangible moods and resonances. And so rose the Cold Moon.

Alela Diane & Ryan Francesconi are currently on tour in Europe (see dates below) and will open for Joanna Newsom at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Toronto on December 14. For more Alela Diane info, go to her site http://www.aleladiane.com/

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Emitt Rhodes' new album Rainbow Ends is out February 26 on Omnivore Recordings. Watch clip below.

Emitt Rhodes began his career in his teens, as drummer for the SoCal band The Palace Guard. He eventually took the reigns as leader of The Merry Go Round, who scored pop hits with “Live” and “You’re a Very Lovely Woman” in the late 1960s. At the release of his critically acclaimed eponymous debut in 1971, he gained a reputation as a “one-man Beatles,” since he wrote, recorded and produced the album in his home studio. But then, the way many music stories unfurl, after battling bad contracts and industry demands, Rhodes saw his last release, Farewell To Paradise, in 1973. Emitt Rhodes never recorded another full-length LP. Until now.

On February 26, Omnivore Recordings will release Rainbow Ends, Emitt Rhodes’ first new studio album in 43 years, on CD, Digital and gatefold, colored vinyl. A PledgeMusic campaign has been set up for pre-orders, offering exclusive collectibles, the album itself, and even a day in Rhodes’ studio. Details are available at www.pledgemusic.com/emittrhodes

After connecting with producer Chris Price in 2013, Rhodes revived his home studio with help from Price and an all-star band, all of whom had been enamored of Rhodes’ work: Roger Joseph Manning Jr. and Jason Falkner (both solo artists, members of Jellyfish, and currently in Beck’s studio and touring band), indie producer and musician Fernando Perdomo, Rooney’s Taylor Locke and New Pornographers’ drummer Joe Seiders. They would cut the new record live in that space.

More special guests appeared to make this momentous release even more special: Aimee Mann, Susanna Hoffs (Bangles), composer and producer Jon Brion, Wilco’s Nels Cline and Pat Sansone, Bleu, and Probyn Gregory & Nelson Bragg from Brain Wilson’s band, among others. What was achieved is more than what folks thought would ever happen. They made Emitt’s first full-length in more than four decades.

Rainbow Ends is comprised of eleven new Emitt Rhodes songs for longtime fans who’d held onto their out-of-print ABC albums, for those who found out about Rhodes via “Lullaby” being featured in The Royal Tennenbaums, and for the uninitiated who’d heard their favorite artists and friends rave about his small, but truly vital and influential catalog.

Producer Price says, “I view this as a continuation album, meaning it isn’t meant to be recreating the sound from his first record, but instead what he might have sounded like after his third album, Farewell To Paradise, if he kept making music in the mid-to-late ’70s.”

According to Rhodes, “I had a spurt there, you know. I just wrote a whole bunch of songs. I’m just gonna write what my heart tells me, because that’s the only thing that really matters, isn’t it? Sometimes you don’t know, and then the light goes on and you do know.

“The music is very good on this record. I think that these guys are all wonderful players and there’s all sorts of interesting stuff. I hope people like it, and I want you young guys to be able to get your due.
“I think whenever it happens, it happens on time.”

In March, Emitt Rhodes will showcase at SXSW 2016 with more dates in the works.

Thursday, December 3, 2015

Nashville's roots-minded Music Row outsider Paul Burch – who always seemed to be born out of time – steps into the shoes of "The Singing Brakeman" Jimmie Rodgers for his new concept album, Meridian Rising slated for release by Plowboy Records on February 26.

Much more ambitious than the conventional tribute album notion of simply reworking a few old faves, Meridian Rising is an imagined autobiography of the genre-defying 20's superstar in which Burch — writing and singing as Rodgers — recalls the locales, love affairs, and harrowing scraps that were all part of the Blue Yodeler’s brief but colorful life from his childhood in Meridian, Mississippi, to his death at New York's Taft Hotel in 1933.

According to Burch, the project was inspired by a studio outtake of the Rodgers classic “Let Me Be Your Sidetrack” recorded with bluesman Clifford Gibson (listen below).

“They sounded joyous together,” he says. “It’s the only recording of Rodgers with a contemporary blues guitar player and the song became a kind of portal for me to jump into his life.”

Meridian Rising was co-produced with Grammy Award winner Dennis Crouch, the WPA Ballclub’s longtime upright bassist also known for his work in T Bone Burnett’s studio band (Rhiannon Giddens, Raising Sand, Elvis Costello). Players include Grammy winners Fats Kaplin and Tim O’Brien along with Jon Langford of the Waco Brothers, finger-style guitar renegade William Tyler, co-founder of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band Garry Tallent, and Billy Bragg, who makes a guest appearance in “If I Could Only Catch My Breath.”

While making Meridian Rising, Burch was given access to rarely seen archives at the Country Music Hall of Fame and C.F. Martin guitars and had conversations with Rodgers biographers Nolan Porterfield and Barry Mazor. The result is a musical tour-de-force that mirrors Rodger’s uncanny ability to seem timeless and modern simultaneously.
“Meridian Rising is a 21st century echo emanating from inside Jimmie Rodgers’ 1930s ears,” says noted music historian Robert Gordon, “The Singing Brakeman skirted both time and place to become America’s transcendent hobo, a walking, train-hopping singing crossroads of all things American. Here, the sounds of that spectacular crossroads are given a newfangled reimagining by a modern original.”

The initial vinyl run of Meridian Rising will include a limited-edition 10-inch EP of exclusive tracks featuring Billy Bragg, plus two songs recorded direct to the King Records cutting lathe at Third Man Records in addition to a full album download and a poster by Jon Langford. The album track "Meridian" which premiered on NPR last week can be heard below. For more information about Jimmie Rodgers and/or the Meridian Rising project, check out Paul Burch's site right here.